At this point, remove armor damage entirely

When the game came out you had no way of repairing your armor other than paying a npc. From update to update, the point of armor damage seems to have disappeared...

Being revived repairs your armor.Using mistlock repairs your armor.Having a damaged armor does nothing if you don't have at least 8 stacks of it, which is almost never reached.There's an anvil behind every rock in Tyria.And repairing is completely free.

So, what exactly is the point of having an armor damage system? Shouldn't it simply be removed, or replaced by some other form of penalty for dying a lot?

Did you like the Death Penalty system of GW1?I don't want to start to pay for armor repairs after going so long without paying. There would have to be a good reason to do so. It would put repair canisters out of business (if they even sell independently now).

@Game of Bones.8975 said:Did you like the Death Penalty system of GW1?I don't want to start to pay for armor repairs after going so long without paying. There would have to be a good reason to do so. It would put repair canisters out of business (if they even sell independently now).

Just checked, there are still cannisters in the shop, 35 gems eachRepair cannisters are already useless... :/When removing/changing the armor damage system, Anet could simply give some sort of compensation to people who have some of these.

Can you explain the GW1 system? I didn't play it

@Game of Bones.8975 said:Did you like the Death Penalty system of GW1?I don't want to start to pay for armor repairs after going so long without paying. There would have to be a good reason to do so. It would put repair canisters out of business (if they even sell independently now).

Having just received a repair canister out of a BL chest, I'm fully supportive of the OPs argument, as at this point, armor damage doesn't really add anything to the game, and in some ways, actually has a negative impact.

Armor damage is just to let you know you've died several times and to take a break to repair. There won't be another penalty, because that's why they removed the cost; they felt dying and waypointing was already enough.

@"ROMANG.1903" said:Can you explain the GW1 system? I didn't play it

Every time you died your health and energy (used by skills) was reduced by 15%, up to 60%. It was cleared once you went back to town, or you could partially "repair" it by killing bosses or using consumables.

I agree that currently armour damage is a bit of a useless mechanic for most players. It seems to mainly affect new players who either don't realise that only broken armour matters and they don't need to stop what they're doing and repair it every time it gets damaged, or who are struggling enough that they die a lot and end up repairing armour a lot. In case you're wondering yes it is possible to die 7 times in a row, or more, on a regular basis - I managed it when I was trying to complete PoF hero points on a Weaver wearing random bits of gear from level up rewards (I used Tomes rather than a booster) - my stats were a mess, I wasn't used to the skills and hadn't decided on a build and so I kept on dying. (In the end I either used LFG or hung around the hero challenge until someone else showed up.)

But for longer term players who are hopefully more experienced it's basically a non-issue. Unless you're struggling in a raid the chances are you'll pass a repair station before you start breaking armour, or you'll have picked up free repair canisters from login rewards and other places.

Trouble is I wouldn't want to see it removed because I think it's important that death is a bad thing in games. In the majority of cases you die because you did something wrong, whether it's your build or your timing or not paying attention (or logging off just after clearing a normally lethal area because apparently 6 years isn't enough time to learn that events will reset while you're offline...or so I've heard). If there's no consequence for dying there's no incentive to avoid it and so one less incentive to learn what you're doing.

At the moment I don't think armour damage achieves that. But I'm not sure if I'd like to see it removed and replaced with something else entirely, or changed so it does impact everyone.

@ROMANG.1903 said:

@"Game of Bones.8975" said:Did you like the Death Penalty system of GW1?I don't want to start to pay for armor repairs after going so long without paying. There would have to be a good reason to do so. It would put repair canisters out of business (if they even sell independently now).

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Death_Penalty

The short version is it's like the downed penalty, but it didn't go away on it's own - only if you killed enemies, and then only gradually. Dying gave you 15 'stacks' of Death Penalty and each stack reduced your health and energy by 1%. (Energy is the cost for skills, like the thief's initiative.) If you kept dying you could get up to 60% Death Penalty, or you could clear it by killing enemies (especially bosses) or by using certain items which were mainly obtained from festivals.

Its similar to armour damage in that if you keep dying you lose stats and it gets harder and harder to do anything, but it started right from your 1st death.

@Healix.5819 said:Armor damage is just to let you know you've died several times and to take a break to repair. There won't be another penalty, because that's why they removed the cost; they felt dying and waypointing was already enough.Then why do we still have to click on an anvil? This has absolutely no point. I don't really care if they want to replace the system or remove it entirely, but right now it's just an annoying icon under your health bar...

@"ROMANG.1903" said:Can you explain the GW1 system? I didn't play it

That's an interesting system but to make it in GW2 it would need to wear off over time, I think.

Well if armor damage doesn’t mean something then perhaps Anet should change that so that it does rather than remove it.

I'm of the opinion that you die too easily in the game, and the impact of death is not significant enough. But if that isn't changing, then, yeah I agree that armor breaking is totally pointless.

Well, it does punish you for ress rushing multiple times. It can stay as it is right now lol too harmless to be annoying, too inconsequential to be punishing

@Danikat.8537 said:Trouble is I wouldn't want to see it removed because I think it's important that death is a bad thing in games.I couldn't agree more, but that is the issue, besides pushing you to talk to a npc or click on an anvil every once in a while (if you don't egt revived or use mistlock, that is...), it does absolutely nothing. It is not a penalty, just a mild annoyance.

@"ROMANG.1903" said:So, what exactly is the point of having an armor damage system?

The higher challenge during instances. One more motivation to focus more and avoid dying. :+1:

Also, I love this thing and would be quite miffed if I had gotten it in vain. ;)

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"ROMANG.1903" said:So, what exactly is the point of having an armor damage system?

There is an anvil in evey dungeon and mistlock singularities in every fractal. Which instances exactly are you talking about?

And yes we already talked about cannisters. They are already useless, Anet might as well let us echange them for something else if they remove armor damage. I personally destroy my cannisters when I loot them in daily log rewards or black lion chests.

Canisters is useful for when theres no anvils around. I bought a permanent one due to the -awful- experience with finishing the head of the snake story dungeon in lake doric. Died so many times that had to rezrush the final boss before finishing it. a super difficult instance alone.

@LucianDK.8615 said:Died so many times that had to rezrush the final boss before finishing it. a super difficult instance alone.

You died that many times that you required armor repair due to being left without armor? :o

That one had some problems with knockdown spam when it was initially launched. If you weren't playing a class that had long-duration stability options, your best bet was to just take off your clothes and suicide on it until it died.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Well if armor damage doesn’t mean something then perhaps Anet should change that so that it does rather than remove it.

Except they’re clearly intent on going the other route. When they removed the cost, they should’ve just scrapped the entire mechanic instead.

To be fair armor damage has always been fairly toothless as a death penalty, they really should have just removed it when they got rid of the cost to repair.

The GW1 death penalty was a lot more harsh but it also had some play to the mechanic. You could "work off" your death penalty by killing enemies, especially bosses. And you could "repair it" using certain consumables.

You could recreate the effects of the GW1 system if you tweaked the armor damage system a bit. Make it so damaged armor only provides half it's stats so there is a penalty right away but also let you repair it by killing enough enemies or completing an event or something. Then also bring back the cost to repair so that there's a trade-off with it. You can pay to remove the penalty instantly or you can fight at a disadvantage and get it repaired for free.

Not that I think they'd ever actually do this. Like the personality system, armor repair is just a mostly vestigial relic from the game's earlier years.

But unlike Personality, I won’t miss when it’s gone. ;)

Given ANet's typical response to why things in game don't change, I suspect it was easy to reduce the repair cost to zero, and too much trouble to remove it entirely.

The extremes for penalizing death are:

• You have to restart entirely, and pay some sort of penalty, whether repair costs, reduced damage/health, or easier-to-down (or a combination). This is close to how it was when the game launched.
• You suffer a minor inconvenience and an ugly icon. This is close to how it is now.

People complained about the high-penalty extreme and now (other) people complain about the low-penalty annoyance we have now. What I have yet to see is someone offering a middle ground that makes the game game feel more satisfying. The requirements are:

• It hurts to die, but not so much makes fights become increasingly difficult.
• It's intuitive enough, so that the vast majority won't need an explanation.
• It's simple enough that it can be implemented as part of some feature update.
• It is more fun for more people than the current mechanic, and the one we had at launch.

Like @Danikat.8537, I like that there's some sort of penalty. Like others posting, I don't notice or care very much; it's a minor inconvenience. And yet I can't think of a system that would be different enough to make it worth anyone's time to design, test, implement.

Oh, the memories of walking out of Caudecus' manor with only my helmet on...

@Plautze.6290 said:Oh, the memories of walking out of Caudecus' manor with only my helmet on...

That guy sure knows how to throw a party, eh?

ppl want a hard mode right without affecting other players, here is your chance.hard mode damages your armor 50% faster and stats are affecting much worse.....

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Plautze.6290 said:Oh, the memories of walking out of Caudecus' manor with only my helmet on...

You, good Sir, just made my day =)